Storms, floods lash Spain’s Balearic Islands

Storms and heavy rains continued to batter Spain on Tuesday, particularly the popular Balearic Islands where homes were submerged and violent winds tore out trees, officials said.

Mallorca was the worst hit of the popular tourist archipelago, with emergency services saying they had registered 134 incidents throughout the day.

Public television broadcast images of a woman swimming out of her car and battling currents after torrential floods inundated a bridge in the small town of Santanyi, in Mallorca’s west.

Airport management company Aena said Tuesday evening that a dozen flights in Spain had been diverted because of “strong thunderstorms”.

Within an hour, more than 96 litres (25 gallons) of rain per square metre were dumped on Santanyi while 53.7 litres per square metre fell on Ibiza’s airport, disrupting flights.

Last October, 13 people died in flash floods on Mallorca.

Tuesday’s storms also upset road and metro traffic in Spain’s capital Madrid and neighbouring areas after flooding the previous night transformed streets into torrents.

In Arganda del Rey near the capital, footage on local media showed rivers of mud dragging cars away and mounds of hailstones forming on the streets.

“No one was hurt and the interventions were relatively minor for a storm of this magnitude: removing branches from roads, floods in garages, basements or commercial premises,” an emergency services spokesman told AFP.

Firefighters in the region were called out 196 times between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.

Parts of four highways surrounding the Spanish capital were blocked off on Monday evening as were five metro lines where some stations were flooded.

On Tuesday morning, traffic on some highways was still disrupted as several lanes were closed, while part of one underground line was cut off around Arganda del Rey.

The hospital in this town at the southeast of Madrid was flooded, as was the major Peace Hospital in the Spanish capital, the emergency services spokesman said.